RIVERSIDE: Driver outruns police but the chase isn’t futile

A traffic stop, a stolen car, a foot pursuit, an abandoned car rolling away and then coming back, a surprise arrest and a citizen who loaned police his ladder were all part of a drama in Riverside late Sunday afternoon, Aug. 4, that drew a lot of officers — and the public’s attention.

“It was a great case,” Riverside police Lt. Dan Hoxmeier said. He added it had a happy ending — for police.

The incident went like this, Hoxmeier said:

Two police officers on patrol near Hunt Park on Jackson Street tried to pull over a late-model Honda because of a couple of traffic violations. The car drove into the park’s lot. Just as a dispatcher told the officers that the car was stolen, the driver and passenger jumped out of the car, which was still in drive.

“The foot chase was on,” Hoxmeier said.

As officers ran after the men, the car rolled up a curb and toward the glass doors of the community center. Then it rolled back and bumped into the police car.

More police officers, a helicopter and two K-9 officers then arrived. Officers looked all over the place. When one resident overheard officers talking about climbing up into an attic, he offered the police his ladder. The offer was accepted.

Hoxmeier noted that one benefit of such incidents, with police swarming a neighborhood, is that residents call in tips on where to look and try to assist in other ways.

One officer viewed the video in the police car of the officers who made the traffic stop. He said he thought he recognized the driver as living in a nearby house, on Sherman Drive.

Police surrounded the house. Christopher J. Ramirez, 42, of Corona, ran outside. Then he ran inside. Then he ran outside. Then he was arrested on a parole violation.

Only he wasn’t the driver.

“He knew it, but the officers didn’t,” Hoxmeier said.

The driver got away, for now.

Someone used a shaved key — the shape manipulated into sort of a skeleton key — to start the Honda.

Hoxmeier figures that if forensic technicians can lift the driver’s fingerprint from the car, investigators will have a good chance of finding the driver, on the theory that this wasn’t his first brush with the law, and that his print will be in the database.

Follow Brian Rokos on Twitter: @Brian_Rokos and online at blog.pe.com/crime-blotter/